Winner of the Hellam Young Artists’ Competition and the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition, Graeme Steele Johnson has established a multifaceted career as a clarinetist, writer, arranger and performance designer. He has appeared recently as a TEDx speaker, in recital at The Kennedy Center and Chicago's Dame Myra Hess series, and as a chamber musician at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the Ravinia Festival, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music Northwest. As a concerto soloist, he has performed with the Vienna International Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra and the Caroga Lake and Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestras.
Johnson's diverse artistic endeavors range from his 2019 TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, to his music- and poetry-weaving show IMPRESSION, based on his octet arrangement of Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. In this same spirit of shedding fresh perspective on familiar music, Johnson has authored numerous arrangements of repertoire ranging from Mozart and Debussy to Gershwin and Messiaen, and performed them around the country and on recording for a 2020 release on MSR Classics. He has also recorded commercially for Hyperion Records, with forthcoming recordings on Cantaloupe Music and Musica Solis Productions, and has been broadcast several times on Chicago's WFMT radio station.
In 2019, Johnson joined the artist roster of the Center for Musical Excellence as its only clarinetist. His recent festival appearances include Maverick Concerts, Music Mountain, Lake George Music Festival, Caroga Lake Music Festival and The Banff Centre, and upcoming performances include Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with the CME Chamber Orchestra, return performances at the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival with David Shifrin, Valerie Coleman and the Rolston String Quartet, and appearances in Belgium and Austria. His writing about music continues to be published by the international journal The Clarinet, as well as in program booklets by Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music Northwest, Yale and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, among others.
Johnson holds graduate degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he was twice awarded the school's Alumni Association Prize. His major teachers include David Shifrin, Nathan Williams and Ricardo Morales, and he is now a doctoral fellow at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York under the mentorship of Charles Neidich.
Johnson's diverse artistic endeavors range from his 2019 TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, to his music- and poetry-weaving show IMPRESSION, based on his octet arrangement of Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. In this same spirit of shedding fresh perspective on familiar music, Johnson has authored numerous arrangements of repertoire ranging from Mozart and Debussy to Gershwin and Messiaen, and performed them around the country and on recording for a 2020 release on MSR Classics. He has also recorded commercially for Hyperion Records, with forthcoming recordings on Cantaloupe Music and Musica Solis Productions, and has been broadcast several times on Chicago's WFMT radio station.
In 2019, Johnson joined the artist roster of the Center for Musical Excellence as its only clarinetist. His recent festival appearances include Maverick Concerts, Music Mountain, Lake George Music Festival, Caroga Lake Music Festival and The Banff Centre, and upcoming performances include Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with the CME Chamber Orchestra, return performances at the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival with David Shifrin, Valerie Coleman and the Rolston String Quartet, and appearances in Belgium and Austria. His writing about music continues to be published by the international journal The Clarinet, as well as in program booklets by Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music Northwest, Yale and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, among others.
Johnson holds graduate degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he was twice awarded the school's Alumni Association Prize. His major teachers include David Shifrin, Nathan Williams and Ricardo Morales, and he is now a doctoral fellow at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York under the mentorship of Charles Neidich.